Chapter 7

But it will be remembered that the summer of 1898 was exceptionally hot, so hot indeed that M. Zola, though many years of his childhood were spent under the scorching sun of Provence, found a siesta absolutely necessary after the midday meal. It was only later that he ventured out on foot or on his bicycle, often taking his hand camera with him.

At some distance from the house where he was residing, in the midst of large deserted grounds, overrun with grass and weeds, there stood a mournful-looking, unoccupied private residence of some architectural pretensions, on the building of which a considerable sum had evidently been expended. The place took M. Zola's fancy the first time he passed it on his bicycle. The iron entrance gate was broken, and he was able to enter the garden and peep through the ground-floor windows.

All spoke of decay and abandonment; and when, through my daughter, M. Zola began to make inquiries about the place, he was told a fantastic tragic story. A murder, it was said, had been committed there many years previously; a poor little girl had been killed by her stepmother, and her remains had been buried beneath a scullery floor.

There was also talk of the child's father, who at night drove up to the house in a phantom carriage drawn by ghostly horses, and hammered at the door of the mansion and shouted aloud for his dead child!

The story was alleged to be well known, and it was said that not a girl from Chertsey to Esher, from Walton to Byfleet, would have dared to pass that house after nightfall, when harrowing voices rang out through the trees, and the shadowy horses of the ghostly carriage trotted swiftly and silently over the gravel.

The story not only impressed my daughter Violette, but it greatly interested M. Zola, on whose behalf I made various inquiries. For instance, I closely questioned an old gardener who had known the district for long years. All he could tell me, however, was that there were certainly some strange rumours abroad among the womenfolk, but that for his own part he had never heard of any crime and had never seen any ghost.

And at last others told me quite a different story of the house's abandonment, and this I here venture to give, though I certainly cannot vouch for its accuracy. The place had been built, it seemed, some forty years previously by a retired and wealthy London pawnbroker, a gaunt, shrivelled old man, who, mounted on a white mare, had in his declining years been a familiar figure on the roads of the district.

Extremely eccentric, he had largely furnished and decorated the house with unredeemed articles that had been pledged with him. There was nothing _en suite_. Old chairs of divers patterns were mingled with odd tables and sideboards and sofas; there were also innumerable daubs 'ascribed' to old masters, and a wonderful display of Wardour-street _bric-a-brac_. But, indeed, one has only to look at an average pawnbroker's shop to picture what kind of articles the house must have contained.

It seems that the old fellow in question had three daughters, whom he kept more or less imprisoned on his recently-acquired property, though they were charming girls well worthy of being sought in marriage; and the story I heard was that three officers sojourning in the district had one day espied the three forlorn damsels over the garden hedge, and had forthwith begun to court them, much to the ire of the misanthropic, retired pawnbroker. That stern old gentleman ordered his daughters into the house, and then kept them in stricter confinement than ever.

But love laughs at locksmiths, and the amorous officers eventually carried the place by storm, and beat down all parental resistance. Three weddings followed on the same day, and all ended for a time as in a fairy tale. But the old pawnbroker subsequently married again to relieve his solitude, and after his death his will was attacked, and an interminable lawsuit ensued, with the result that the property was left unoccupied. Now, it appeared, it was for sale, and before long would probably be cut up into building plots.

Whatever romantic element there might be in the story of the pawnbroker and his daughters, M. Zola much preferred the popular and gruesome legend of the little girl murdered in the scullery; and, some time later, when he consented to write a short story for 'The Star,' it was this legend which he took as his basis, building thereon the pathetic sketch of 'Angeline,' the scene of which he transferred to France.

He has stated in his article 'Justice,' published in Paris on his return from exile, that during most of the time he spent in England he was virtually in a desert. There were people about him of course; but he retired into himself as it were, communing with his own thoughts, and seeking no intercourse with strangers. This is true of the period to which I am now referring. Still he did not complain of solitude. In fact he knew that quiet was essential for his work. Only once or twice did anything happen of a nature to cause any anxiety. Neither Wareham nor myself was much troubled at this period; there was a lull even in the periodical visits which gentlemen of the Press kindly favoured me.

Still we had taken our precautions by admitting a mutual friend, Mr. A. W. Pamplin, into our confidence. If M. Zola's communications with Paris, through Wareham and myself, should be threatened, Mr. Pamplin was to take upon himself the duty of re-establishing them.

At M. Zola's house there was, so far as I am aware, but one brief _alerte_. This occurred one afternoon, when a servant came to my daughter with the tidings that there was a French hunchback at the door. Violette impulsively rushed off to tell M. Zola of it; but when in her turn she went to the door to see who the person might be, she found that he was an Englishman, a traveller for some county directory, who had merely performed his legitimate work in requesting to know the name of the occupier of the house. Of course the only name given was that of the owner, then absent at the seaside.

Thus the hot days sped by peacefully enough. M. Zola had at least found occupation and quietude, though it was naturally impossible that he should feel content with his lot. Each day brought more and more home to him the consciousness that he was in exile, and that contumely had been his reward for seeking to save France from the shame of a great crime.

I have previously mentioned that during the first week or so of his sojourn in England he had refused to look at newspapers and--at least so it seemed to me--had sought to banish the Dreyfus affair and his own troubles from his mind, much as one might seek to drive away a hateful nightmare. But before long he again fell under the spell and followed the course of events with the keenest interest. And again and again, reading of the great battle being waged in France, he longed to return home, and grew restless and impatient.

Moreover a complaint from which he has suffered on and off for some years troubled him on more than one occasion. He always rallied, however, and returned to his work with renewed energy. 'Fecondite' was already taking shape in the leafy solitude in which he dwelt. And undoubtedly the steady task of creation, resumed morning by morning, greatly helped him to quiet the anguish of heart which the course of events in France would otherwise have rendered intolerable.

NOTE.--While this work was appearing serially in the 'Evening News' I received numerous letters from readers interested in various matters mentioned by me. With respect to the foregoing chapter, a lady living at Staines wrote saying that she was looking out for 'a cheap haunted house,' and asking for the address of the one I had mentioned. I was unable to comply with her request, as personally I do not believe the house was haunted at all. Moreover, to prevent the sale or letting of any particular house by asserting it to be haunted would be an offence under the libel laws. As I could not tell what course my lady-correspondent might take in the matter, I preferred not to answer her. May she forgive me my impoliteness!

X

'LE REVE': THE DREAM

When the owner of the house which M. Zola had rented desired to resume possession, it became necessary to find new quarters of a similar character for the master. And so he was transferred to another Surrey country house where the arrangements remained much the same as previously: work every morning, resting or bicycling in the afternoon, followed by newspaper reading and letter-writing in the evening.

The grounds of M. Zola's new retreat were very extensive, and in part very shady, which last circumstance proved extremely welcome to the novelist, who on coming to 'cold, damp, foggy England,' as the French put it, had never imagined that he would have to endure a temperature approaching that of the tropics.

The heat deprived him of appetite, and, moreover, he did not particularly relish some of the dishes provided for him by a new cook who had lately been engaged. We all know how great is the servant difficulty even under the best of circumstances; and when cooks and maids have to be secured in hot haste an entirely satisfactory result is hardly to be expected. Moreover, many servants refuse to live in country retirement, far away from their 'followers,' and thus one has at times to take such as one can find.

As for the cookery to which M. Zola was at certain periods treated, he beheld it with wonder and repulsion. His tastes are simple, but to him the plain, boiled, watery potato and the equally watery greens were abominations. Plum tart, though served hot (why not cold, like the French _tarte_?) might be more or less eatable; but, surely, apple pudding--the inveterate breeder of indigestion--was the invention of a savage race. And why, when a prime steak was grilled, should the cook water it in order to produce 'gravy,' instead of applying to it a little butter and chopped parsley? This, Dundreary-wise, was one of those things which nobody, not even M. Zola, could understand.

However, a visit to a fishmonger's shop had made him acquainted with the haddock, the kipper, and likewise the humble bloater; and occasionally, I believe, when his appetite needed a stimulant he turned to the smoked fish, which seemed so novel to his palate. The cook, of course, was mightily incensed thereat. For her part, she most certainly would not eat haddock or kippers for dinner; she had too much self-respect to do such a thing, so she boiled or roasted a leg of mutton for her own repast and the maids'. I do not say that she was wrong; and, indeed, M. Zola never forced people to eat what they did not care for.

But in the same way he wished for something that he himself could eat, and he was weary of the perpetual joint and the vegetables _a l'eau_. One day, when in a jocular spirit he was talking to me on this subject, I told him that we English had a saying to the effect that 'God sent us food, but the devil invented cooks.'

'You are quite right,' he replied, 'only as a Frenchman I should put it this way: "God sent us food, but the devil invented English cooks."'

Towards the end of August he again became very dispirited. The 'cause' did not at that time appear to be prospering in France, where so many people remained under the spell of the deceptive declarations and documents which had been made public in the Chamber of Deputies by War Minister Cavaignac early in July.

Of course the Revisionists were still hard at work, but in the face of M. Cavaignac's speech, placarded throughout the 36,000 townships of France, they seemed to have a very uphill task before them. The anti-Dreyfusites on their side were more arrogant than ever, and although M. Zola never once lost faith in the justice of his cause and its ultimate triumph, he did, on more than one occasion, question whether that triumph would come in a peaceful way.

Felix Faure was then still President of the Republic, and I am abusing, I think, no confidence in saying that M. Zola regarded that vain, showy man as one of the great obstacles to the victory of truth and justice. Faure, he said to me, had undoubtedly at one time enjoyed well-deserved popularity; he, Zola, had been received by him and in the most cordial manner. But the President's intercourse with crowned heads, and his intimacy with arrogant general officers, coupled with all the flummery of the Protocole, all the pomp and display observed whenever he stirred from the Palace of the Elysee, had virtually turned his head. He was in the hands of those military men who opposed revision, and he shielded them because their downfall would mean his own. He was bent on the hushing-up course lest his Presidency should become synonymous with a great judicial crime; he feared that he might be forced to resign even before his term of office was over, or, at all events, that he might have to abandon all hope of re-election.

And thus with the President and the more prominent generals opposed to revision, M. Zola, though confident in the final issue, more than once said to me that there might be serious trouble before all was over.

He was now kept very well informed of all that took place in France; intelligence often reached him before it appeared in the newspapers; and now and again he told me what was brewing. Going backward, too, he confided to me some curious particulars of the genesis of the Revisionist campaign. But he will himself some day tell all this in a book of his own, and I must not anticipate him. I will only say that various important things he mentioned to me in the autumn of 1898 have since become well-known, acknowledged facts, and I have every reason to believe that time will duly show the accuracy of those which have not as yet been publicly revealed.

There is one point to which I must refer at more length. In his declaration 'Justice,' published on the expiration of his exile, M. Zola stated that he had long suspected Colonel Henry, though he had possessed no actual proof of that officer's guilt. This is so true, that I well recollect listening to a conversation between him and M. Desmoulin during the first days of their sojourn in England, when they compared notes with respect to their impressions of Henry, whom they had particularly noticed at Versailles on the occasion of M. Zola's sentence by default.

They had then observed how nervous and crestfallen the colonel looked--the very picture, indeed, of a man who dreads the discovery of his guilt. This was the more remarkable, as Henry's confident arrogance at the earlier trial in Paris had been so conspicuous. The man had a skeleton in his cupboard--to Zola and Desmoulin that was certain.

M. Zola is a good physiognomist, and his friend (as a portraitist) is scarcely less gifted in that respect, and they felt equally certain of Henry's culpability. As yet they could not say that it was he who had actually forged that famous 'absolute proof' of Dreyfus's guilt, which they knew to have been forged by some one, but that time would prove him guilty of some abominable machination was to them a foregone conclusion.

One day, it must have been I suppose the 31st of August, a rather strange telegram in French reached me for transmission to M. Zola. It came from Paris, and was, so far as I remember, to this effect: 'Be prepared for a great success.'

A name I was acquainted with followed; but what the telegram might mean I knew not. There was absolutely nothing in the newspapers with reference to any great success achieved at that moment by the Revisionist party; but possibly the message might refer to one or another of M. Zola's lawsuits, such as that with the 'Petit Journal' or that with the handwriting experts. I re-telegraphed it to M. Zola, and that day, at all events, I thought no more of the matter.

But I afterwards learnt that the telegram had perplexed him quite as much as it perplexed me. A great success? What could it be? He racked his mind in vain. He reviewed all the phases and aspects of the Dreyfus case, wondering whether this or that had happened, but not suspecting the public revelations which were then impending, the tragedy which was being enacted.

For a while he walked up and down, feverish and anxious (he was at the time in poor health), and then he would fling himself on a sofa, still and ever indulging in his surmises. With that kind of prescience which he had so frequently displayed in the Dreyfus affair, he felt certain that something very important had occurred, for otherwise such a mysterious telegram would never have been sent him. This lasted the whole evening.

My daughter Violette was with him at the time, and his feverishness doubtless gained on her. At last she retired to rest, while M. Zola, according to his wont, carried a lamp into his own room to sit there a while and read some French newspapers which had reached him, via Wareham, by the evening delivery. There was nothing in them of a nature to explain the mysterious telegram; still he read on and on in the hope, as it were, of quieting himself.

It was, I believe, between eleven o'clock and midnight when he rose to go to bed, and as he did so he heard some loud exclamations, followed by a cry. At first he fancied that the calls came from one of the servants' rooms, and he paused on the landing. Then, however, as they were repeated, he found that they came from my daughter's apartment. With fatherly solicitude he waited and listened. Violette was calling in her sleep.

Practical enough in matters of everyday life, this girl of mine has literary partialities of a somewhat gruesome kind, and her avowed ambition (I quote her own words) is to write, some day, stories full of witches and wizards, that shall make people's flesh creep. For this reason I keep such of Anne Radcliffe's uncanny novels as I possess carefully locked up.

I can well remember my daughter telling me at times of strange things dreamt by her in her sleep; but not of being of a romantic or a mystical turn myself, I have usually pooh-poohed all this as nonsense. And such I believe is the course which fathers usually adopt if their daughters' imaginations begin to run riot.

As for M. Zola, when he heard Violette calling in her sleep, his first impulse was to rouse her, but all suddenly became still again. The girl had probably sunk into a more peaceful slumber. And so, after waiting a few minutes longer, he thought it best to leave her as she was.

Nothing further disturbed M. Zola that night; but on the following morning, when he met Violette downstairs, he asked her how she felt, and told her that he had heard her calling in her sleep. He had probably formed the same opinion as I should have formed under the circumstances, namely, that it was a case of indigestion or a little excitement.

But she turned to him and replied, 'Oh! I had such a frightful dream. . . I was in a big black place, and there was a man on the ground covered with blood, and people were crowding round him, talking with great excitement. And I saw you, Monsieur Zola, and you came up looking like a giant and waved your arms again and again, and seemed well pleased.'

M. Zola was dumbfounded. He could make nothing of it. A man in a pool of blood and others round him; and he, Zola, waving his arms and looking well pleased! It was nonsense; and he was disposed to laugh at the girl and chide her. But a little later, with the arrival of some morning newspapers, the position suddenly changed.

Here I should mention that as the Paris journals only reached M. Zola with a delay of twelve or four-and-twenty hours, it had just been arranged that he should be supplied with two or three London papers every morning, and that he and Violette between them should put the telegrams concerning the Dreyfus business into French.

He opened one of these English newspapers--which it was I do not recollect--and there he saw a whole column dealing with the arrest and confession of Colonel Henry. The heading to the telegrams, the very words 'arrest' and 'confession,' made everything intelligible to M. Zola; and beneath all this came a brief wire headed, I think, 'Paris, midnight,' and worded much to this effect: 'Colonel Henry has been found dead in his cell at Mont Valerien.'

So that was the man whom Violette, in her dream, had seen weltering in a pool of blood, surrounded by his custodians, who had rushed in full of excitement! M. Zola's presence in that vision was, so to say, symbolical. 'He had waved his arms and had seemed well pleased'--so the girl had put it in her frank, artless way. 'Well pleased' may perhaps appear to be scarcely the correct expression. At all events, it needs to be interpreted. Most certainly Zola never desired the death of a sinner; but, on the other hand, he could only feel some satisfaction at knowing that Henry's crime was at last divulged to the world.

This, then, is how my daughter dreamt Henry's death. I do not wish to insist unduly on the incident, and I have no intention of appealing to the Psychical Research Society to test, corroborate, or disprove the case.

There was one rather curious feature that I have not yet mentioned. My daughter has assured me that during the same night she dreamt the same thing over and over again. She tried to banish the vision, but ever and ever it returned, as if to impress itself indelibly upon her mind. And ever did she see M. Zola waving his arms as he hovered round the scene.

At that time the girl knew nothing of Colonel Henry; she understood very little about the Dreyfus case; and all she had to go upon was the enigmatical telegram and M. Zola's talk during the evening, when he was expressing his thoughts aloud. But at that moment he had foreseen no death, murder, or suicide, and if the possibility of any arrest had occurred to him it was that of M. du Paty de Clam, which the Revisionist papers were then demanding.

It is true that in infancy my daughter had often seen Mont Valerien, as I lived for some years at Boulogne-sur-Seine, and the hill and fortress towering across the river were then familiar objects to us all. But the girl was little more than a baby at the time, and so this circumstance can have exercised no influence upon her. Moreover, she has told me that she had no notion as to what might be the actual scene of her dream; it merely appeared to her that she was in France, because the people she saw raised ejaculations in French.

Passing from this incident, I may point out that the telegram sent to M. Zola through me was explained by the news in the English newspapers. It was evident that the 'great success' referred to in the message was the discovery of Henry's forgery and possibly his arrest.

Directly I saw the news in a London newspaper I hurried off to M. Zola's, and when I reached his abode about noon I found him expecting me. We then went over matters together, the press telegrams, my daughter's dream and the probable outcome of the whole affair.

As was natural, M. Zola was quite excited. First, the document which Henry had confessed to having forged was the very one that General de Pellieux had imported into the Zola trial in Paris as convincing proof of Dreyfus's guilt. At that time already its effect had been very great; it had destroyed all chance of M. Zola's acquittal. Then, too, it had been solemnly brought forward in the Chamber of Deputies by War Minister Cavaignac, who had vouched for its authenticity. And now, as previously alleged by Colonel Picquart, it was shown to be a forgery of the clumsiest kind.